The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) has submitted a plan to the State Council on setting up two to three hundred medical waste disposal centers over the next two to three years.

Officials and experts at the Ministry of Health and the Beijing municipal government said that the move is a lesson from the outbreak of SARS.

 

The outbreak of SARS that hit many areas of China from early March to late June in 2003 claimed 394 lives on the Chinese mainland, and produced massive medical garbage.

 

However, hospitals in nearly all large and medium-sized Chinese cities had no adequate incineration facilities then.

 

A sub-standard incinerator was too simple to eliminate harmful and poisonous substances in medical garbage and just produced particles that polluted the air, said Nie Yongfeng, a professor with the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering of Qinghua University,

 

"We believe that medical wastes are no less dangerous to human health than things like radioactive waste and toxic particles discharged by some industries," Wang Shancheng, a SEPA official, told Xinhua.

 

Sources with the Beijing municipal government said that the Chinese capital is to build two new medical wastes disposal centers by the end of 2004, which are expected to dispose of 60 tons per day.

 

Beijing was among the world's hardest hit regions during the SARS epidemic last year, where 193 deaths were reported.

 

Wang Shancheng said the SEPA plan was also meant to address the country's environmental concerns.

 

A survey conducted by Nie Yongfeng, showed that about 90 percent of medical wastes produced in China is buried like household garbage while only 10 percent was burned in incinerators.

 

"Such a practice has caused a myriad of environmental problems, and could be a long-term threat to soil and water sources," the professor said.

 

Incineration is costly compared to other methods of disposal. But Nie and other experts said that after incineration, the amount of solid waste could be reduced by 80 to 90 percent, thus requiring much less burial space.

 

(Xinhua News Agency January 8, 2004)